sprint training

A traditional “rest” travel day, which means sitting in a suit and a tie in a hot meeting room for eight hours, then doing the airport steeplechase (I had fast lane access today, hurray!), flying for 90 minutes, and a 2 hour drive, arriving close to midnight.

Thursday

It’s a holiday in the Czech Republic, and I slept in long, then had a long slow morning which ended around 2pm. I hacked together a prototype of a new chart, which I will explain soon, over on the analytics blog.

Around 2pm, I headed to the lake for a row. Getting to the rowing club was a challenge on this hot, sunny holiday. The road to the club is quite narrow, and when two cars meet, one of them has to stop at the nearest place that is slightly wider so the two cars can pass each other. Normally, this works pretty smooth, but this time the road was populated by people who don’t usually drive here. I am going to stereotype a bit, so apologies in advance, but I felt I was only meeting people in oversized SUVs who don’t really know how big their car really is. They were driving more than a meter from the guard rail, eyes big as tennis balls, scared to scratch their car. That made it slightly challenging to pass each other.

Anyway.

The lake was full of small boats, of course. I think the water is now actually a mix of suncream and water. Wondering if that makes the boat go faster or slower.

The session was 3x(5×30″/variable)/6min. So three sets of 5 30 second intervals, where the 30 second intervals were at 36, 38, 40, 38, and 36spm, and the rest is 30 seconds, 45 seconds, 1 minutes, 45 seconds.

With all the recreational boats, swimmers, etc, I had to chose the bearing in the direction of the least number of boats. That involved quick 180 degree turns and other course changes depending on the traffic situation.

I am happy to report that despite these challenges I was able to hit the prescribed stroke rates. This workout is not easy. You basically go at faster than 1k race pace for 30 seconds, then you have just enough rest to paddle 5 strokes, and then you go at an even faster pace. The rest after the 40spm is a bit longer, but you really need that rest. It does make you comfortable rating up when in pain.

All metrics were nicely in the usual range, so I won’t bore you with more graphs. But I will include a sneak preview of the new chart:

Not much time to think, because the break is just 30 seconds. So getting ready for the next 250 from standing start while still breathing hard.

Start, and the same 3×10 stroke routine. Beep. 1:49 pace.

Then 2:30 minutes of not rowing. Just wait in the sun and think about the pain that will come almost immediately after the start of the 1000m.

Time. Ready. Go. Start strokes, then 4 sets of 3×10 strokes focusing on technique. High stroke rate out of the start and the pain didn’t come immediately.

It came after 30 strokes. I was going at 32-33 spm and 1:51 pace and between strokes 30 and 40 that dropped to 31 spm and 1:54 pace.

Expecting improvement after the half way mark I battled on.

No improvement there but I managed to keep the 1:54 – 1:55 pace.

Well, even that pace dropped but I kept cycling through my focus areas and just kept going. Telling myself ‘you’re not giving up now’.

Writing blogs helps in these situations. Nobody wants to write a blog about giving up a well opened 1k.

Final 25 strokes and I changed the counting pattern. In this phase of the race I count to five. Five times.

Final time 3:47. Not bad actually. In neutral weather. Flat water and no wind.

In the blog about yesterday’s training I forgot to write that I measured my catch angle on the dock. During the row I tried to memorize my real catch position, then at the dock I moved the handle to that position and did some goniometric measurements. 53 degrees roughly.